I am making the switch from vegetarian to vegan – come with me on this journey of food, health, and fitness.

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Hello and Welcome to Fitting Into Vegan

Welcome everyone to my Fitting Into Vegan blog. I have been a vegetarian for over 11 years and it has been easy. I just want to say that I am a little nervous being a writer about cooking and baking as I am not one who follows directions well, and I always add more veggies and fruits whenever I cook. Hopefully you will enjoy what I have to say and what I have to cook for you.

A little about me: I decided to cut out meat from my diet after being on the Atkins diet for over four months. After eating nothing but meat I had lost about 20 pounds but started getting nauseous when making hamburgers or taco meat…and really just whenever I thought about meat it made me sick. I think I just overdosed on the whole meat is my savior thing and needed to totally cut it out. So after some deep thoughts and conversations with my mom, I stopped eating it. I still drank milk and ate eggs and fish, but after a couple of years stopped all of that. Currently I still eat cheese and yogurt, but not often; I eat store-bought breads and FlatOut; I eat baked goods from office coworkers and drink International Delight creamers in my coffee.

Something to know about me…I am really good at cutting out food items but have trouble with portion control…like most people. Not only did I cut meat products from my life, but over the last almost four years I have cut out chips, chocolate, soda, Cheez-its, Wheat Thins and Triscuits, white chocolate and yogurt covered things, Starbucks, store-bought cookies and peanut butter chips. I know the list is longer but I can’t think of them all. I find it wholly easier to cut things totally from my diet and life than portioning them throughout the day or their existence in my kitchen. I am the type of person that if a bag of chips is in my cupboard I will be in it nonstop until they are all gone. So I just say nope, I can’t eat it. I also am trying to cut out sugary products-way easier in thought than in process. But, I live by the theory that if you don’t buy it you can’t eat it. So, I try very hard not to even purchase them.

So I decided to name this blog Fitting Into Vegan since I have been trying to fit in to the vegan lifestyle for a while but have not been able to fully commit. Since I have been a vegetarian for so long, I mostly don’t think about meat all that often. Yes, if I am at a restaurant I admit a cooking burger does smell good, but it doesn’t make me want one. I don’t crave meaty lasagna, or tuna casserole, or Red Robin chicken fingers. Do they look good? Yes. Can I figure out a way to have the same thing as vegetarian or vegan? Yes. So that is my goal for us.

I am a long-standing cook-for-the-week person. I make lunch my main meal for the week, since it is easier as a singleton to not have to figure out anything else. I buy my week of foods on Saturday and cook on Sunday. I portion everything out into five specific containers and hope for a Sunday meal out of it also. Nightly I get my meals for the day set so I have nothing to do in the morning but drink my coffee and watch the news. I cut up my fruits for the mid-morning snacks and store them in Ziploc baggies in the fridge (cold fruit is so good!), then stack it all together so I have literally nothing to do but stuff it in my lunch bag. I am a disciplined person who can eat the same thing not just for a week straight, but if I find a recipe I love I will make it over and over and over. This blog will definitely help me with variety and filling my plate with varied ingredients.